Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411220008
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
1949-1953 - Establishment of the People's Republic of China, land-reform and counterrevolutionary campaigns. The first to die were the ousted Nationalists and then landowners. Chinese physicist and author Ding Shu believes several million were killed during this period. Harry Wu, resident scholar at Stanford University, puts the number at 1.5 million to 2 million people.
1950-present - Information Office of the Tibetan government in exile estimates that 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed under Communist rule. The Chinese government and some Western scholars counter this figure is too high.
1950-present - Prison System: Wu, who spent 19 years in prison, estimates 20 million prisoners have been executed or died in the ``laogai'' or labor-reform system of prisons and labor camps under Communist rule.
1950-1953 - Korean War. Estimates of Chinese and North Korean casualties range from 1.5 million to 2 million dead, wounded or missing from war.
1952 - ``Three-antis'' campaign against corruption, bureaucracy and waste. Wu believes 500,000 people killed.
1950s - Hundreds of thousands believed killed in Communist crackdown on Christianity and other religions.
1955-1957 Anti-rightist campaigns believed to have cost 1 million lives.
1959-1961 - The Great Famine: The government blamed poor harvests on bad weather, but it is universally acknowledged today that the famine was caused by Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward industrial campaign of 1958-1960. Western scholars and the Chinese government have reported for years that 15 million to 20 million people died. Judith Bannister, a demographer and head of the Eurasia Branch of the U.S. Census Bureau, determined that at least 30 million died. Chen Yizi, a former Communist Party official and now head of the Center for Modern China in Princeton, N.J., used government statistics to determine recently that 43 million people died. Ding says he's seen government documents that indicate as many as 55 million people died.
1966-1976 - Cultural Revolution: During Mao's decade-long attempt to recapture power and destroy his opponents, murder and suicide were rampant, especially among rival factions of his fanatical Red Guards. It is generally accepted that about 1 million people died. Wu estimates that 4 million to 5 million may have died, but says there is no government data to prove this.
by CNB